Progress...or is it?

"Progress"..........or is it?

A couple of days ago, I attended a panel discussion on the future of energy. One of the panellists was a very distinguished academician who is on the planning board for many of the energy schemes. He told us that the real aim of the energy planning scheme is to produce more energy to increase the overall energy consumption in India.
We all know that the energy consumption of a country is taken as in index of the country's progress and the different rates of energy consumption can be used to compare how "developed" a country is with respect to other countries.
I do not agree with the idea that consumption of resources="progress of a country"
I think the situation is more compliacated.

Once upon a time, a really long time ago, man was forced to walk to his destination. he would get tired and longed for an easier method of transport. Nowadays he just hops into a car and speeds of to his destination saving time and energy. So we have progressed right and the rate of progress can be actually computed by calculating the relative energy consumptions. But there are other factors that we have not taken into account. for instance, the emissions produced by the car! These emissions have caused green house warming. The world has now reached the tipping point in terms of climate change. So have we really progressed to the extent indicated by the above parameter?

An additional point I want to mention is that though say in 2012 the GDP of china will actually overtake the American GDP china will stay not be classified as a developed nation. This is because there is still a huge discrepancy in the distribution of wealth. So even though the planning commissions work out in India and China, will the country really be progressing, or will the rich just consume more and more and the poor remain in their present state?

Lastly, I believe that the resources of the country have to be taken into account when measuring the development indicators. The average US citizen is consuming several fold times what an average Indian citizen consumes. The energy demands of the US have far exceeded its supply capabilities. The US is then forced to import. We all know that the US is in debt. We know that right now the economic conditions in the US are bad. Somewhere soon the US will have to cut its demand. Its going to be hard for an American citizen to give up comforts he had earlier taken as rights. so do we have to think again and reanalyse our parameters for measuring progress.


I think we have behaved like an exceedingly short sighted race.


Now the question comes to what parameters can we really look into. Lets broadly classify man's priorities. They are housing, agriculture, transport and communication, industrial growth and health care.
I would have thought that health care would be an important parameter to measure progress. However, i think that health care is an important factor for measuring man's social progress. What about progress in the economic sector etc. They are not completley dependent variables. So now this seems complicated. how do we find an overall index that will quantify the progress of a nation. How do we quantify sustainable development of a country.

The next thing am going to say may sound exceedingly cynical. i do not believe in sustainable development. I just believe in sustainable technology. What I mean to say is that we devise new technologies to take care of existing problems. These technologies produce a whole new set of problems which have to be solved. Therefore another avenue of technology must be opened. This leads to a never ending chain of problems and solutions. is there a way to break this chain??

And the answer is I don't know. i have no idea how we're going to proceed in the future. I have no idea how we are going to get hold of a parameter which will really truly tell us which way the world is going, whether we are screwing ourselves in the future for solving problems of the present. I have no idea how we are going to be able to make allowances for our parameter making allowances for our inability to see into the future and predice possible side effects.
In short i am a confused soul and would welcome any comments suggestions from you!!!